How to empty the LCU-folder in Win11 ?

glasskuter · Jan 16, 2022

Mine's only 235 mb in size. I've never deleted the contents of this folder in my life unless it was cleared out with disk cleanup and I didn't know it. My question is why would one want to clean it out. I'm all for housecleaning but I don't scrub my floors with a toothbrush. You can take things too extreme.

AddRAM · Jan 16, 2022

Because you don`t need it anymore.
Are you gonna let your 256GB M.2 keep filling up with useless data you don`t need ?

TairikuOkami · Jan 16, 2022

glasskuter said:
I'm all for housecleaning but I don't scrub my floors with a toothbrush. You can take things too extreme.

Indeed, I cleaned it twice and updates broke both times. LCU keeps only the latest update so the next one knows, what was replaced before and how to continue properly. I am all for cleanup, my C has ~12GB only, but this one is not worth the risk. Just like using ResetBase cleanup, it works, until it does not and then you have to either repair or reinstall Windows, there is no other way around it.

Bree · Jan 16, 2022

glasskuter said:
Mine's only 235 mb in size. I've never deleted the contents of this folder in my life unless it was cleared out with disk cleanup and I didn't know it. My question is why would one want to clean it out.

Disk Cleanup when run to 'clean up system files' can delete all but the latest one. It may only be a few hundred MB now, but remember that this is a 'cumulative' update. As time goes on these will inevitably become larger each month. For Windows 10 each month's LCU package is now over 1GB.

I delete it to keep down the size of my system images. With more that half a dozen machines to image, and keeping at least three previous images for each machine, then that can mean I can easily run out of space on my external HDD.

Bree · Jan 16, 2022

TairikuOkami said:
I cleaned it twice and updates broke both times.

As I said earlier, I've been deleting them routinely every month since September 2019 with no ill effects whatsoever, apart from the known effect that deleting them means you can no longer uninstall the latest CU. This is across all my machines, Home or Pro, x86 or x64, 10 or 11, physical or VM.

That's a dozen machine in all, and there have been more than 25 LCUs since I first started deleting them. I've never seen any machine with a broken Windows Update.

TairikuOkami · Jan 16, 2022

Bree said:
I've never seen any machine with a broken Windows Update.

I am probably deleting way more than you do, I assume that Windows needs at least one backup left.

Bree · Jan 16, 2022

TairikuOkami said:
I am probably deleting way more than you do...

Probably that's it. The LCUs are the only part of Windows I delete manually, for the rest I use the MS tools provided, such as Disk Cleanup and DISM's StartComponentCleanup option.

larc919 · Jan 17, 2022

AddRAM said:
I never send anything to the Recycle Bin, it`s set to destroy.
@larc919 I think you mean, Your way is much slower :):)

Nope. SHIFT+DEL starts a rather slow process of confirmation and then working up to 100% when the Package for Rollup Fix folder finally disappears. The way I do it is an immediate deletion of the LCU folder with no administrator confirmation required.